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Monthly Archives: June 2014

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Linking with Mama H of Mama Knows, Honeychild as the new host of Five Favorites. She’s one of the funniest bloggers out there and somehow mixes spiritual edification with LOL humor seemingly effortlessly. Become a follower if you aren’t already!

A black tie wedding fit for Princess Kate in a dress of her own finally committed me towards trying the service that lets me afford to wear a dress of someone much richer. Friends of style have raved and cheered and looked awesome. Business executives have rightfully marveled over the two Harvard creator’s business savvy. Its called Rent the Runway, and it is perhaps the most inclusionary, convenient, and financially wise idea to hit normal people fashion since the genius of Marshall’s.

It works like this: Browse the hundreds and hundreds of high end designer dresses from 120 of the industry’s top designers including everyone from Missoni to Oscar de La Renta, to Tibi and Elizabeth and James, to Marchesa and Carolina Herrara. Pay as low as $30 to wear dresses worth as much as $3500 and feel like a million stylish $ for a special night or the entire four days during your rental ownership.

5 Reasons Why I was scared:

1. I won’t find my style

2. It won’t fit

3. It will be too long and, thus, a waste of money

4. I won’t be able to figure out the return policy

5. I’ll hate not owning it

5 FAVORITE Reasons Why it’s my new Favorite

1. Designers at a Discount

While I think almost 4 kids and pushing 30 qualifies me for buying investment pieces, there is something scary and mostly stupid about dropping top dollar for trends because as Heidi Klum likes to remind us while wearing short skirts, “one day you are in and the next you are out.” Additionally, even though approximately my cousins pay attention to my Instagram, internet pictures can easily wreak havoc on feeling good about outfit repeats. So! Instead of spending who knows on a who knows, $30 to test something thats $1900? I’ll take it!

2. Dresses for Everyone

With 120 designers from which to choose and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of styles, trends, classics, dreams that are actually affordable, there is truly a dress for everyone!!!! As a 25 week pregnant woman who stands at 5 feet nothing let me be living proof that there are dresses for everyone. And, hemming tape is delivered with dress. Hunting and reading the profiles is key. Kind women who have worn the dress offer height, age, weight, body type and photos to indicate whether or not a particular style will work. Stylists offer one on one help. It’s actually difficult to mess it up. AND! Choose two sizes for no additional cost and a whole different dress for just $25!

3. Delivered to your Door

Too many babies to try on a dress at the mall? Too busy staring at unfolded laundry? Spaghetti again? Shipping costs adding up to much more than just $30? RENT THE RUNWAY!

4. Easy Return and Easy Refund

When day four arrives, slip the beauty into a UPS drop box and wait for a super friendly email confirming its arrival back at RTR. Buyers remorse or it doesn’t fit? Call them and they will credit you!

Its so easy, a mom who just accidentally crashed the car with three screaming children inside, can do it.

But buyer beware: RTR tends to be generous and offer a free makeup SURPRISE! Babies, or rather, my baby, can sense that sort of potential happiness, and spread it all over a bed spread, their face, and can even get it dangerously close to a very expensive gown that is not mine. Additionally, 3 year olds, and also 4 year olds, but especially 1 year olds, do not, I repeat DO NOT, understand “no touching its a rental!” Keep baby wipes close by and run out on a dream date with the husband 🙂 Also, if Monday morning rolls around and a late night of baby in utero partying kept you up much too late to function, and the dress must go back, just be sure all four doors of the car are securely closed before backing out of the garage. Or else, the car door breaks. And your children might make fun of you. And you might deserve it.

If you ever find me picketing (waddling) the streets of Washington with the Feminists anytime soon it might be because of maternity clothes.

While I fully apologize to MLK for this, I have a dream that one day I will be able to walk into a high end department store and browse entire collections of beautiful designer clothes made to fit a pregnant woman well, without the fear of the overpriced dress fabric potentially catching on fire if I stand too close to a birthday cake.

I have a dream that women will no longer be asked to spend twice as much on fabric that is significantly cheaper to manufacture. I have a dream that when shopping I will not have to search so so so much harder to find something that fits during a stage of femininity that should be celebrated and considered normal.

I have a dream that one day when I swim laps at 9 months pregnant I will not be asked to wear a bikini because absolutely no athletic brands make a full piece swimsuit that fits a pregnant athlete.

I’m dreaming of a day when compression technology leaves me less itchy and more comfortable, sans looking like a grandma, because swollen veins hurt and shouldn’t have to be ugly too. Of self-expressive colors and prints with fewer ill placed bows and ruching. Of a recognition that not all pregnant people are one size; some of us are petite and still need to buy pants. That diaper butts should be reserved for infants. That price hijacking should be illegal.

I have a dream that designers will view making clothes for a pregnant figure as beautiful and desirable as the flat stomach because pregnancy is the natural result of all that sex they are always trying to sell.

Please join me in my drama because, women, we deserve better. Most of us happily and actively choose to get pregnant in prime fashion years, and here we are reduced to choosing between expensive yet cheap, hot, itchy fabrics and would you like that sizable bow on your back just above the pregnant bum or around your large belly to make it larger on this shirt that costs about 3 cents to make?

This pregnancy I’m attempting to push the boundaries of my style and experiment with colors, shapes, fabrics, and, even, buttons. Thus, I’m wearing as few “maternity” clothes as possible.

While they still fall down, they do so less. While the fabric would keep me warm in a snow storm, it is well made and reserves the diaper butt for my baby. If I went to work, I would wear these there. I will point out that the non maternity version of the exact same pants is $40 cheaper than the maternity. Not fair!

Like this:

To Jim, 3 days after his 30th birthday and on our 6th wedding anniversary,

It’s difficult to believe it has been a full year since the last time you thought you turned 30. Even so, it is with so much excitement and happiness that I wish you the happiest year of all, to you, the very best person I have ever known.

With 6 years of marriage just 3 days after the big threeoh, 1/5 of your life has been spent married to yours truly, and that, I think, is super cool. Josie and I had a blast picking a gift appropriate for 1/5 of a life spent together, and post delivery, I can’t wait to enjoy a bourbon or few with my favorite partner. PS and FYI, your daughter is strangely comfortable and well behaved in the alcohol store.

Your birthday began delicious and sugary: cake, and crepes, and eggs, and scones. By 10 am I thought we probably needed more sugar. Since every working dad loves a surprise from his three small children and pregnant wife, in the middle of the day, completely unannounced, I thought it best to tell you nothing. By noon, we finally had enough shoes on enough feet to make it to the bakery. One dozen cupcakes for you and your work friends coveted by three small drooling children.

Upon arrival at your place of work, our starving kids were welcomed by a completely vacated office, out early for the last day of school. I found you by your car in the parking lot, wondering why I hadn’t called and why you married such an idiot. With cupcakes as our comfort, each child picked their favorite to enjoy in the blistering heat. James picked the chocolate one, and you wanted some. So, on the 30th anniversary of your birth, you took a bite of James’ chocolate cupcake.

You took a bite of his cupcake, Jim. A bite. Without warning, your mouth enjoyed the chocolate icing that his mouth had already planned to enjoy. You tasted the small cake before he tasted the small cake. Then, before you could even lick the rest of the icing off of your chin, back to your office you went to finish your phone calls because you are a dedicated, good, and hard worker that has absolutely no idea of his power to destroy the dreams of a four year old boy.

Because you had taken a bite of his cupcake. One, singular, day ruining, earth shattering, his life is now over, bite of his cupcake.

As his sisters giggled their way through a sticky mess, now all over their faces, outfits, carseats, and hair, his tears streamed into what remained of the chocolate icing. His celebratory treat, now mutilated and made salty by the watery excess of his sadness.

I tried to concentrate on driving through the busy city streets, but the piercing screams of the backseat left me distracted. His cupcake. You took a bite. You gave him your germs. You didn’t ask. He wanted it. He picked it. He loves you, but you took a bite of his cupcake, and he might never be happy ever again. Through the four doors of our dirty Acura, all of Pittsburgh’s city heard the consequence of your craving for chocolate as I prayed our baby in utero still has a chance at developing normal hearing.

I drove and tried to reframe his lament into generosity and a great gift for your birthday. Yet, no matter what a mom could say amidst deafening screams, it was clear. His life was ruined.

For one brief moment the screaming stopped. At the sight of a puddle, all three weirdos stared in awe of the way its dirty water splashed our car. I have never known gratitude for a large collection of murky rain like I did in that brief moment of relief from his screams, and I might never again complain when I accidentally step into one. I also might owe that puddle our daughter’s life. When I looked through the rearview mirror to catch a glimpse at amazed wonder, that’s exactly when I noticed her walking around the back seat, picking up the skirt of her ballerina leotard over her icing covered face and hair, as she twirled and spun, like the dirtiest little tiny dancer there ever was. I thought you had buckled her, you were too busy ruining James’ life.

I pulled over just as fast as I could into perhaps one of the nicest streets in all of our city, and pierced all of their eardrums.

The thing about trying to buckle a baby who has now tasted the freedom of walking around and practicing clumsy ballet in the backseat of a moving vehicle is that its basically impossible. Wet pigs in a rodeo squirm less, and I would imagine, kick much more gently. I’m sure baby #4 will one day return the blows to either her or me, whomever he/she chooses to blame for the forceful disregard of his personal space.

With a strong desire for earplugs, I drove on to our home. James still crying in the backseat, Josie happily reminding him that you had not taken a bite of her cupcake, Rita still pissed about being restrained, me spotting the best 30th birthday gift your mom has ever given you, other than life, at our front door: Birthday Balloons. There was one for each of them, because she is a good hearted genius. The horror of the shared cupcake now just a crummy mess staining further the dirty floor of our car now just a distant memory to the incomparable joy of floating helium on a string.

It was with the greatest gratitude that two babysitters agreed to watch them for an overnight, and even though there were twin beds in the room we booked, I agree, it was super romantic. Remembering the day spent watching you skeet shoot, eating like I’ve never eaten before and will never eat again, and golfing was one that will always make me smile. And when I tell people I shot a 90, I’ll probably allow them to be impressed and leave out how many holes we golfed. Thank you for your patience with me, your wife, as I 10-putted every hole, responded to your advice to “choke up” with “no,” and “Why don’t you try your sand wedge?” with “I prefer my driver.”

To you, my sweet husband! I hope and pray our 6 turns to 60, that God remains first, and that we never stop laughing through the crummy and crappy, because there is just so much good here. As we begin year 6, the year of Iron, or so the standard anniversary gifts indicate, let us allow Iron to beget Iron, growing stronger in love and faith, perseverance, joy, and fortitude.

Happy Birthday, and Happy Anniversary. I still feel like the bride that jumped up and down on the altar, but please, never again, take a bite of a cupcake that isn’t yours.